Those and other new lanes on Birchmount and Pharmacy Aves., will be removed — at a cost of $410,000.

City councillors have voted to spend more than $400,000 to erase bike lanes on Jarvis St. downtown as well as Birchmount Rd. and Pharmacy Ave. in Scarborough.

In the same 28-9 vote, they agreed to physically separate 14 kilometres of bike lanes on downtown streets — two of them north-south, two east-west — at an unknown cost.

The protected mini-network will be a first for Toronto. But if, as expected, it goes on streets that now have painted lanes, the net result of Wednesday’s vote could be a shrinking of Toronto’s 117 kilometres of bike lanes.

Cycling advocates got one concession — the year-old, two-kilometre Jarvis lanes won’t be removed until the ones on Sherbourne St. are separated from other traffic, expected by December 2012.

Although he faced a chamber packed with cyclists opposed to the lane removals, public works chair Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong proclaimed Wednesday “a really positive day for cyclists. This is a really positive day for individuals who believe we need more safety in the downtown and that cyclists need more safety . . .

“What we’ve done today is a massive step forward in terms of cycling infrastructure. I’m going to continue on with that.”

He estimated the cost of reconfiguring the street and returning a reversible fifth lane to its centre at $200,000. The Jarvis lanes were installed last July at a cost of $59,000.

The cost of removing the 2.5-kilometre Birchmount and 3.4-kilometre Pharmacy lanes is pegged at $210,000. Councillor Michelle Berardinetti (Ward 35, Scarborough Southwest) successfully campaigned in last fall’s election on getting them removed, saying they are unpopular with residents.

The cost of creating separated lanes is unknown, he said, because staff must still decide whether to use bollards or other means to divide the street.

Andrea Garcia, advocacy director for the Toronto Cyclists Union, called the delay in removing the Jarvis lanes “a big win.”

But she accused Mayor Rob Ford’s administration of ramming the changes through without proper community consultation, calling the vote overall “pretty disappointing.”

Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam, whose ward includes Jarvis, said the vote derails a 2-year-old streetscape beautification plan on which the city has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars.

People will still ride to and from school and work on Jarvis, she said.

“They will still be there, they will just no longer be safe . . .

“What we’ve seen today is a reversal of good urban traffic planning. We are now removing bike lanes and not installing them on the city roads where we need to.”

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